The Wandering Maps in the City of Bhubaneshwar, India

Abstract

In everyday life, walking is either considered as an exercise or as a necessity for conveyance. However, ‘the walk’ can create a complete new experience of the city – as Calvino describes in Invisible Cities. Walking produces space - the pedestrian city as contrasted with the city experienced in other ways. This paper seeks to describe the relationship of walking/wandering in the planned city of what Koenigsberger had imagined in Bhubaneswar in contrast to what the city now offers to a regular pedestrian. The paper will discuss walking in the city of Bhubaneswar, planned by Koenigsberger, the first post-independence capital city, in the state of Orissa. The low-scaled neighbourhood planned city was to accommodate the requirements of modern life. Out of the eleven principles that the planner believed and integrated in the plans of Bhubaneswar, one of the main concepts was to bind the city within convenient walking distances. Bhubaneswar has recently been the first in the list to be selected under the Smart City proposal in India. The method includes analysis of walking through three parameters; the street, the public square and the alternative routes within the core city. The study is a documentation for further research in drawing cartographic and mind maps for documentation of further research in the rapidly growing city to uncover its layers of growth.